About the book: year / On the eve of World War II, the foreign-controlled port of Shanghai became a meeting place for the most notorious adventurers of the 20th century under the supervision of the fabulously wealthy Sir Victor Sassoon .At the height of her depression, Hann arrived in Shanghai after a failed romance with an alcoholic Hollywood screenwriter and was sure she would never love again. Checking into Sassoon's glamorous Cathay Hotel, Hann finds herself caught up in the social whirlpool of expatriates from pre-war China, including Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, Harold Acton and a colorful gangster named Morris "Double-Gun" Cohen. But when she meets Zau Shinmai, a Chinese poet from a famous family, she discovers the real Shanghai through his eyes: a city of wealthy colonists, triple agents, opium smokers, displaced Chinese peasants and increasingly desperate White Russians and Jewish refugees - a place that her innate curiosity will lead her to explore it first-hand. However, danger lurks on the horizon: the brutal Japanese occupation destroys the seductive world of pre-war Shanghai, paving the way for Mao Zedong's communists to take power. Taras Gresko is an award-winning journalist and the author of several non-fiction books that have been translated into six languages ​​on three continents. He is a frequent contributor to The New York Times, National Geographic Traveler and The Guardian..